[Case Studies Included] What Can SFA Do? An Explanation of 5 Essential Functions

While SFA Offers Many Features, It Can Be Difficult to Grasp What It Can Actually Do

Sales activities involve a wide variety of tasks. To support and streamline these complex operations, SFA tools are packed with numerous features.

Although many features are introduced on SFA tool websites and in brochures, while you may feel that it could be useful for various things, you might also hear feedback that "there are so many features that it is difficult to grasp what can actually be done or how it can be utilized within our company."

In such cases, let us focus on the following five functions.

1. Customer Management
2. Opportunity Management
3. Negotiation Management
4. Budget vs. Actual Management
5. Activity Support

SFA features can generally be classified into the five categories above, with more granular functions linked to them. While specific features vary by SFA tool, understanding these basic functions first will make it easier to comprehend the system.

SFA Feature 1: Customer Management

Feature Overview

This feature manages information on customers (prospects) who are the targets of sales activities.

In addition to basic information typically found on business cards—such as the contact person's name, company name, address, and phone number—you can check sales-related information per customer, including contact history and the progress of negotiations.

This feature is often used not only by the sales department but also in collaboration with other departments such as marketing and customer support.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

By implementing SFA to centralize customer information, you gain the following benefits:

• Customer information can be shared across the entire team or department.
• Information handovers become easier when sales representatives are transferred or resign.
• Risks can be mitigated by sharing information on problematic customers, such as those with a history of disputes.

It is crucial to reach a state where "everything you need to know about a customer can be found here."

To improve the accuracy of managed customer information, some companies integrate SFA with business card management tools or corporate databases, or link it with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that focuses on managing existing customer data.

SFA Feature 2: Opportunity Management

Feature Overview

This feature allows you to grasp and manage the status of sales opportunities.

Opportunity management visualizes the following for each product, customer, and sales representative:

• Progress in the sales process
• Probability of closing
• Estimated deal value
• Expected closing date

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

By using SFA for opportunity management, management can view opportunities quantitatively as data, making it easier to grasp the status of the entire team.

This allows for the identification of "latest opportunities," "high-probability opportunities," "neglected opportunities," and "reasons for lost deals," enabling:

• Approaching high-potential customers
• Prioritizing opportunities to pursue
• Uncovering buried customer leads

This makes it possible to provide efficient instructions to sales representatives.

When utilizing opportunity management features, the key is to clarify and standardize the sales process. If you proceed with implementation while the sales process remains ambiguous, SFA may not lead to improved efficiency.

By visualizing the sales process and analyzing the progress of opportunities, you can identify where the challenges lie in your sales flow and implement improvements.

SFA Feature 3: Negotiation Management

Feature Overview

This feature allows you to grasp and manage the status of negotiations.

Negotiation management records information about the negotiation partner, the sales representative, the content of the discussion, materials used, and the results, allowing you to:

• Track the progress of negotiations
• Share the content of negotiations
• Analyze negotiation results

By utilizing the negotiation management feature, you can perform analyses such as "which sales representative is successful in turning negotiations into opportunities" or "under what circumstances are negotiations likely to become opportunities," and share these insights across the entire sales department.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

Similar to opportunity management, using SFA allows you to extract data from various perspectives—such as customer, sales representative, materials, and the day or time of the negotiation—making analysis easier.

Standardizing negotiations that were previously left to top-performing sales staff and sharing that information can help elevate the entire team's performance, lead to increased revenue, and reduce the risks associated with reliance on specific individuals.

Also, in negotiation management, clarifying and standardizing the sales process is essential.

SFA Feature 4: Budget vs. Actual Management

Feature Overview

This feature manages the budget and actual performance of the sales department.

It allows you to grasp and analyze figures such as:

• Sales forecasts
• Actual sales
• Goal achievement rates

These are tracked by sales process or sales representative and used for overall sales department improvements and management decision-making.

Benefits and Considerations of SFA Implementation

For companies that previously relied on "intuition" or "experience" for forecasting, budgeting, and goal setting, implementing SFA allows them to calculate appropriate budgets and numerical targets based on accumulated data.

Furthermore, because achievement rates can be aggregated quickly, you can execute the PDCA cycle for sales activities with greater speed.

SFA also comes with robust reporting features that can output data in easy-to-understand graphs and tables, making it an essential tool for streamlining management tasks.

While you can create reports filtered by various conditions in addition to daily, weekly, or monthly periods, it is important to decide which reports to use with a clear purpose, such as improving sales efficiency, rather than just outputting reports aimlessly.

SFA Feature 5: Activity Support

All the features introduced in the four points above are realized only when sales representatives correctly input their daily sales activities as data.

However, there are many cases where input is delayed because sales representatives dislike it, citing reasons such as "input is troublesome," "it is meaningless," or "I am being forced to do it by management." One reason for this is that SFA is perceived as a tool for the management side to perform "sales control."

If you cannot gain the cooperation of the sales staff in the field, the utilization of SFA will stall.

This is where the importance of activity support features comes in.

In addition to their daily sales activities, sales representatives must perform tasks such as:

• Inputting customer data
• Inputting sales data such as opportunities and negotiations
• Schedule management
• Submitting daily reports

Therefore, it is important to utilize activity support features that reduce the burden on sales representatives to ensure information is entered appropriately.

Key points include:

• User-friendly input screens
• Ease of input from mobile devices such as smartphones
• Robust input support features
• Automatic posting features

Activity support is a vital feature for utilizing SFA as a tool that makes sales representatives feel that "SFA has made my work easier" and "there is a benefit for me," rather than just for the management side.

Additionally, SFA can manage activities such as the number of appointments, visits, negotiations, and closing rates of sales representatives. By grasping the strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral challenges of representatives through data, managers can more easily provide appropriate guidance and training.

Customer Case Studies That Improved SFA Implementation Results

By integrating SFA with the SFA linkage tool uSonar, it is possible to maximize the results of your implementation.

Case Study: Business Breakthrough, Inc.

Challenges Before Implementing uSonar

• Standardizing fragmented operations
• Building an integrated system to centralize customer information

Reasons for Choosing uSonar

• Extensive track record of integration with Salesforce
• Comprehensive data coverage down to branch offices and business sites, with superior data quality and volume

Results Achieved

• New negotiation volume increased by 120%
• Direct mail response rate doubled
• Cross-departmental utilization, including accounting and general affairs, has become established

Details of the case study can be found here

Case Study: Demae-can Co., Ltd.

Challenges Before Implementing uSonar

• Issues with the comprehensiveness and reliability of store information necessary for developing sales strategies

Reasons for Choosing uSonar

• Ability to integrate with Salesforce and utilize it for promoting DX
• High reliability of information, with over 800,000 restaurant entries registered

Results Achieved

• Enabled the development of precise sales strategies, leading to efficient sales activities
• Reduced man-hours for maintenance and correction of store information by 60%, saving approximately 17 million yen annually
• Streamlined back-office operations such as simplified anti-social force checks

Details of the case study can be found here

Summary

The necessary features, the features that should be prioritized, and the features that should be used first vary depending on the situation and sales process of the company or sales department implementing the system.

However, the five features introduced here are all foundational functions that are indispensable for utilizing SFA.

While SFA has many sales support features, if you find yourself thinking, "There are so many features that I don't know where to start," why not try focusing on these five features introduced today?

Let us correctly grasp "what can be done with SFA" and work toward improving sales efficiency and performance by leveraging SFA tools.